Tag optical

Entries 2 Total

Apple and the Missing PowerBook Successor

Sep 13, 2008 2:15 AM

“I missed you too” – on Flickr by süńdāyx

I’m disappointed with Apple. I’ve been using their machines since I was four years old and have been buying them personally for the past seven. It has been my preferred platform of choice and I’ve never been unhappy with the hardware choices available to me until now. I see a glaring hole in their portable line-up, a small prosumer notebook. This void had been previously filled with the 12″ PowerBook but has never been replaced since its discontinuation in early 2006. One might suggest the MacBook Air as it’s successor, but that’s not paying attention to what the 12″ PowerBook was – a small, lightweight notebook that made almost no compromises in performance and connectivity to achieve it’s minuscule footprint. I do not mean to suggest that there is not a spot in the marketplace for a thin and light MacBook Air, however it’s clear that Apple is leaving money on the table from consumers like myself searching for that elusive perfect computer in a perfect size.

But I have a dream. A dream where there is a speedy and capable notebook running Mac OS X that fulfills these wants and needs. All Apple needs to do is build it. I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up spec. sheet of what this computer should be. I give you, the perfect laptop…

MacBook Pro (13″) – Coming Soon from Apple

  • 13″ 1440×900 LCD (LED-backlight)
  • Discreet Graphics (Dual-Link DVI)
  • Intel Core 2 Duo (Montevina)
  • 2-4GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM
  • 64-128GB Solid-State Disk
  • Gigabit Ethernet Networking
  • 802.11N Wireless Networking
  • Integrated Sprint/AT&T WWAN
  • Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
  • iSight Webcamera
  • Backlit Keyboard
  • 9-Cell Battery*
  • SDHC Reader

This would not require a feat of engineering, although I’m certain that Apple could work their usual magic and include some tremendously innovative features in this notebook. These features exist in many notebooks available today (such as the Sony VAIO SZ, ThinkPad X200/300) but prove to be flawed choices as they do not run OS X and lack the polish I expect from a laptop, which is why I’m an Apple buyer in the first place. An optical drive? Who cares about an optical drive? The world’s thinnest notebook? I don’t need it. Simply put, I want a small and powerful laptop that can handle a long day of on-the-go use and be backed by the operating system I can’t live without.

* To keep with the svelte and clean design of Apple notebooks, a smaller battery can be included and the larger 9-cell high-capacity battery would be left as a CTO option.

Comments (0) / Permalink

Howto: Install Windows Vista from a USB Drive

Sep 6, 2008 3:31 AM

Have you ever needed to install Windows on a computer that doesn’t have an optical drive? I ran into this issue recently when I needed to install Windows Vista on my newest laptop, a Lenovo ThinkPad X200, and thought it would be useful to share the rather simple process here. You can do it from either a USB 2.0 flash drive or a USB hard-drive (the ideal way).

What do you need? A 4GB or larger USB flash drive or hard-drive and a computer with a BIOS that supports booting from a USB device. Almost every computer made in the past three years or so supports this feature. Also, you’ll need your Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 install disc or ISO (for this, I used a licensed copy from my MSDN subscription).

  • Open the Disk Management console (run “diskmgmt.msc”)
  • Format your flash drive as FAT32 and set the partition as active/primary.
  • Copy the entire Windows disc to the USB storage device – the easiest way is by running “xcopy D:\*.* /s/e/f E:\” at the command prompt (where D: is your optical drive/mounted ISO and E: is the USB flash drive.).

Note: If you are using a large external hard-drive, you’ll want to create a partition smaller than the drive itself since FAT32 has certain size limitations. In my case, I chose to make a 6GB active partition and left the rest unpartitioned.

Remember, this is not only useful for computers with defunct or non-existant optical drives – you can also use this for installing Windows on multiple machines quickly as you’ll find it significantly quicker than reading off a DVD.

I have not tested this with Windows XP, however I see no reason why it would not work. If you encounter issues where you cannot boot successfully from the USB drive after the copy, you might need to run the “bootsect.exe” from the command line. Check MS Knowledgebase for more detailed information on this.

Comments (0) / Permalink